Keep Your Film Safe From The Snoopy Rays Of Airport Scanners

The Best Idea: Carry The Film With You And Ask For Inspections By Hand At Checkpoints.

August 25, 2002|By Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times

Free-lance photographer Sergio Ortiz of Malibu, Calif., was returning home from Russia, carrying about 60 rolls of film he had shot there, when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred.

As he passed through tightened security checkpoints at airports in Helsinki, Finland (where his plane was diverted), New York and San Francisco, he panicked when inspectors refused to examine his unprocessed film by hand. Instead they made him take it out of the protective boxes and send it through X-ray machines that were "cranked way up."

"I thought, `Good Lord, I'm going to lose 21/2 weeks of work,' " he recalls. But his worry was for naught. "Not one frame was damaged," Ortiz says.

His experience illustrates the anxiety that stricter airport security standards are causing, even for professional photographers.

There's no universal solution because there are many variables: the speed of the film (Ortiz's use of relatively low-speed ISO 200 film may have saved his work), whether it's in checked or carry-on baggage and whether it's going through a U.S. or foreign airport.

But the experts offer guidelines on what you can do to safeguard your film. In general, putting it in checked baggage appears to be riskiest, followed by sending it through X-ray machines for carry-on luggage, then by having it hand-checked by inspectors. To be absolutely safe, you can buy and process the film at your destination, or use a digital camera.

Here are some options:

Least safe: Placing film in checked baggage. Airport scanners introduced during the last few years emit high-intensity X-rays designed to detect explosives in checked baggage. These X-rays may damage all types of film, according to the International Imaging Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Kodak, Fuji, Konica and Hewlett-Packard.

Although the explosives detection system has been around awhile, deployment in the United States was stepped up after Sept. 11. The federal government wants all airports to have the systems by January.

In 1997 and 1998, two of the imaging association's predecessor groups ran tests on several models of these scanners using film from ISO 100 to 1600 and disposable cameras.

The studies found the Examiner 3DX-6000, made by L-3 Communications in New York, fogged all types of film that passed through it by overexposing it an average of one f-stop and also caused graininess in the images. The more passes, the more damage.

The CTX-5000SP, made by Invision Technologies in Newark, Calif., created fogged bands on film rather than fogging the entire film, as the Examiner did, the study reported. Unlike the Examiner, not all film was affected, depending on whether it passed only through the CTX-5000's regular X-rays or was selected for a high-intensity computer tomography scan similar to those used in hospitals. The CT scan did the only visible damage. It irradiates areas of the bag that appear suspicious to the human operator or the computer, the report said. In general, the faster the film, the worse the damage, the tests found.

The association's advice: "Do not put unprocessed film in your checked baggage." That includes cameras with film in them, Kodak says in a useful guide on its Internet site, kodak.com.

Safer: Placing film in carry-on luggage. The scanners at airport security checkpoints in the United States emit a lower dose of X-rays than those used on checked baggage, experts agree. But even these can damage film under certain circumstances. Foreign airports also may use different machinery with higher X-ray levels.

There is some debate over the safety level of fast film. "Film speeds through 1000 are safe," says Mark Laustra, managing director of aviation business development and strategic accounts for Germany's Heimann Systems Corp., which makes a widely used scanner. (The imaging association agrees, as do many airport inspectors.) That covers most vacationers' film types.

But to be still safer, the imaging association recommends that even low-speed film be hand-inspected "if subjected to multiple examinations."

Safest: Having film inspected by hand. To avoid X-rays entirely, get security guards to inspect your film by hand. To speed the process, use clear canisters or take film out of opaque canisters and put it into clear plastic bags.

In the United States, you are entitled to hand inspections, according to Federal Aviation Administration rules, posted on its Web site, faa.gov/avr/AFS/FARS/far-108.txt.

Using protective pouches: Lead-lined bags are marketed to protect film from X-ray damage. None of the experts I talked to claims the bags protect all film under all circumstances. Their effectiveness varies by the lead's thickness, film speed and X-ray strength, Kodak says.

The imaging association's 1998 test showed that a double thickness of what it called a "standard lead-lined bag" blocked about two-thirds of the X-rays emitted by the Examiner checked-baggage scanner. It took at least four thicknesses to block "almost all" radiation, it reported. Kodak does not advise using these pouches in checked baggage.

I asked Ilana Diamond, chief operating officer of Sima Products in Oakmont, Pa., which sells lead-lined bags, about these results. She says the bags "do not provide 100 percent protection." But she says her company's XPF line, developed after the 1998 test, can protect up to ISO 800 film "with no visible damage" from checked baggage scanners.